I love kefir. We buy it at the store, I don't know if it's the real thing or not but it's delicious. I've considered making it, but I don't even play around with the ginger beer plant that I have.

How different is that from a kombucha mushroom, or scoby or whatever you want to call it? I grew one from a bottle of Dave'sGT. Funny, I think we use these different names for the colonies of "bugs" to make it less gross mentally.

GBP is more similar to tibicos from what I've been told, but it is a distinct scoby. It makes a really nice drink, but it's another one of those things that you can't make yourself, you have to get some from someone else.

One of the years JZ won Ninkasi, one of the prizes was a cask full of beer. He of course cracked it in the hospitality suite and dumped it out into pitchers. It was a pale ale-ish beer, way over-oaked. It was really too much to drink straight, so we kept going and getting samples of beer and blending them with that one in the glass. Ever wondered what an oaked wit would taste like? Done. Oaked pilsner? Oaked dopplebock? We tried lots of stuff, especially after we got into the beers left over from the competition.

In this area you really don't want carpet in your bathroom. In some areas it might be ok, but not around here. Moisture is a big enough problem without carpeting, I had to rip out the subfloor on the two bathrooms we've remodeled.

I like tile too, but we went for cheap and fast until we redo the whole thing. The master bath is the last on the list, the other two we did first since they were smaller projects and more public. They were easier to figure out too, the master might involve moving the toilet, tub, and shower.

GM onstar is another similar situation - if you're upside down in a creek and the water is rising and you hit the blue button.... should they save your life? Obviously, in this situation you have not been an active subscriber for some time. They've already run this past their lawyers,btw. So,you're gonna drown and they know about it - but there's no legal obligation by Onstar.

No legal obligation maybe, but a moral one. If it was me answering that call I'd send whoever I could to help. I'd dare say onstar would too, I think the bad press would screw them. In my mind, that's even worse than the fire department - the fire fighters are risking their lives, the onstar operator is sitting in a chair and making a phone call.

But anyway Drew, did you do any painting or remodeling before you moved in? We probably painted 60% of the interior and replaced all of the carpet upstairs in this place before we moved in. And we replaced the carpet in the master bathroom with some vinyl type flooring until we can remodel it. Yes, I said it. Carpet in the master bathroom.

Yesterday I made 3 kinds of sausage - andouille, Italian, and that green chorizo recipe I posted here the other day. We had green chorizo tonight, friend up with some onions, beans, a little cumin and Mexican oregano, and served over rice. Delicious. No pics though, sorry.

Ha! No worries, I've just been busy. That trip to the farmers market kept me occupied making stuff, and I still haven't gotten through all of the cabbage and cukes yet. Made 2 meatloafs and 5 lbs of sausage yesterday. Busy day at work, blah blah blah, you know how it goes.

Anyway, I'm not going to tell people what to eat - but I'll tell them what I won't eat and why, they can make their own decisions.

Other fish at the market? All kinds of salmon, cod, oysters/clams/mussels, dungeness crab, halibut, monkfish, geoducks, tons of stuff really. We used to fish for flounder and bluefish on LBI all of the time, those were the main things. We never caught eel, but I love unagi.

I send my kids to school every day with their lunch and snacks in these kind of things. Lots of different sizes, and cheap enough that if they break or don't come home from school I'm not out a whole bunch of cash.